Rick Riordan's new book quietly builds buzz

While J.K. Rowling's 'The Casual Vacancy' is getting the media attention, Rick Riordan's latest children's book 'The Mark of Athena' has been racing up the bestseller lists.

'The Mark of Athena,' the third installment in Riordan's 'Heroes of Olympus' series, spent 148 days on the Amazon top 100 list before even being published.

Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling’s new book for adults, “The Casual Vacancy,” may be making the headlines, but another book is slowly racking up boffo sales as well.

The new children’s book by Rick Riordan, “The Mark of Athena,” recently took the place of “The Casual Vacancy” as number one on the Amazon bestseller list, and the book has already spent 148 days on the Amazon top 100 list before even being published. “The Mark of Athena” comes out today.

The new book is the third book in the "Heroes of Olympus" series, which is itself a sequel to the "Percy Jackson & The Olympians" series. The "Percy" series was adapted into a film, titled “Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief,” in 2010.

“I grew up reading Rowling,” a Publishers Weekly user named Keira Jaimee Clark wrote online. “And while I plan to pick up Casual Vacancy at some point before the new year, MoA is much further up my priority list - I'm picking up a copy tomorrow!”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Rick Riordan's new book quietly builds buzz
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2012/1002/Rick-Riordan-s-new-book-quietly-builds-buzz
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe